By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

Set aside Sarah Palin’s calls for “drill baby drill” strategies on the domestic front, for a moment. An ironic result of our foreign excursions of late has been to clear the way for China’s oil company, CNPC to produce more oil and gas.

Unlike other oil companies, when you see their logo, witness a country drilling, not a company.

Today, President Obama offered incentives to the government of Sudan to behave and cooperate with international peace efforts (see this article in the Christian Science Monitor). Sudan has no need to take heed. China’s there making Sudan’s economy spin higher, improving oil and gas production, with an eye to raising the barrels/day production level. Sudan understands their petro-state significance.

CNPC will be doing the same for Iraq soon. Private military security companies and defense logistical contractors should stay a bit longer and grab those lucrative sub-contracts from CNPC and BP.

This business news story behind the political rostrum thumping rhetoric is a real yawner, though. Barrels per day? Who cares? How big is a barrel, anyway?

China reaps the benefits from our foreign policy…when we succeed (Iraq) and when we fail (Sudan). Is this intentional payback to our leading strategic financial benefactor?

Say it ain’t so, Joe…

Now, if we could just unseat that pesky Chávez chap in Venezuela…